“There! It took less than a minute and now I don’t have to worry about getting shut down so badly, was it so damn hard?”

“N-no ma’am. I’m sorry I was just distracted!”

“Stop being an idiot and come with me, you’re going to repay me for the labor now!”

“Y-yes ma’am!”

Not that he wanted to work for Pat for half a day, but it wouldn’t be such a bad way to get closer to her to find out her problem. He could only hope it wouldn’t be the shitshow that Setsuna and Crash had put him through.

“Now, you’re going to be cleaning out the sewage ports, understand?!”

“S-sewage ports?!”

Looks like it was going to be even worse than Setsuna and Crash’s trials combined.

Twenty minutes later he was bent over with a strange looking crowbar, dislodging turds and garbage from a large grate underneath the apartment complex.

“You find the blockage?”

“Y-yes!”

“Great! Now get that shit out of there and I’ll buy you dinner!”

The prospect of dinner sounded less and less appealing to him as the seconds floated by, but he tried not to focus on the smell or the fecal matter and kept digging away. After popping off a few pieces of dried shit and a plastic wrapper of some sort he was able to restart the flow of dirty water, and the grate started doing its job once again. As he walked back towards the small trapdoor next to Pat’s house he tried to avoid looking down at all the filth, instead looking at the equally dirty ceiling.

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“Already? Nice job kid.”

Hand outstretched, Pat helped Luke out of the sewer and back to solid, and dry, ground.

“Man, that stuff had really been stinking for a while, glad you were around!”

“Me too…”

Luke held his queasy stomach, about to throw up, as Pat slapped his back in appreciation. She then helped him take off the rubber suit he had been wearing to avoid dirtying his clothes and they went inside.

“So, what would ya like? I can make something or we can go out if ya want.”

Thinking, he brought himself back to the reality of needing to save Lexa.

“Let’s… Let’s get ramen.”

“Ramen? Why ramen?”

“I just have a hankering for it, plus I know a really good place on the miner’s strip.”

“Hmm, well, suit yourself. Go get a change of clothes and meet me down here in a few minutes, ya smell like shit!”

“No… really?”

Pat snorted and shrugged her shoulder’s with a smile. Luke quickly put on a different shirt and pants and came back downstairs to find Pat in a light coat.

“So, you’ve been to this ramen place a few times, eh?”

“A few times, yeah.”

In his head Luke laughed at the comment. Oh he’d been there before, thousands of times actually. All within one week though honestly. Not that that was something he could tell Pat without sounding insane. Perhaps going to Z-mo’s shop would help him out. Perhaps he could find out Pat’s problem a little easier and perhaps he would be able to breeze through this one and get to the final three. Hell, he might even be able to start Z-mo’s own trial if he got the old bot engaged in this night out on the town. He was impatient, yes, but saving Lexa’s life was fairly important to him.